Negotiation
by codenamepapabear
Summary: Following the liberation of the prisoners of Stalag 13, the SSR decides to make an offer.


_Shortly after the end of WWII._

_SSR main office, New York, USA._

The SSR's main office had a sterile smell that Hogan didn't like. Maybe he was just used to the squalor of Stalag 13. The ramshackle prisoner of war camp wasn't much, as he liked to say, but it was home, or at least it had been. He'd spent the last few years of the war there, but when the Allies showed up to liberate them at last, they were all immediately transferred to London, then New York. Somewhere along the way, Hogan had been pulled aside by a man in a suit and told that one of the top branches of government was interested in him. He'd expected an offer to come back to the Pentagon, or something. Not _this_, sitting in an office and being told that he was the perfect candidate for the remnants of the supersoldier program.

_Supersoldier program?_

Sure, a few of the Captain America comics had leaked through to the prisoners through the Red Cross packages, but Hogan didn't exactly think of himself as supersoldier material. Hell, none of the men even believed any of this stuff existed. Steve Rogers might as well be the next Uncle Sam for all they cared. As for the Red Skull, well, aside for a conversation they'd heard on the coffeepot-radio that involved Klink being shouted at for twenty minutes by a guy named Schmidt about some forwarded paperwork (for which Hogan felt guilty for about half a second - after all, it _had_ been his idea) it was all fiction to them.

Until now.

Now, Hogan was being offered what remained of 'Project Rebirth.' They must have thought they were poets or something when they named it, he mused to himself as he paged through the files that had been shoved at him. Fat lot of good it did them now. Captain America was gone, if in fact he had ever existed at all, and Hogan certainly wasn't going to be his successor. All the SSR could promise was a slowed aging process, which would purportedly take him well into the future without looking a day older. No heightened reflexes or strength or any of the talents Rogers was rumored to have, which admittedly wouldn't help Hogan much in his line of work these days (one way or another, he was going to end up as of those high-ranking officers working as a strategist in back rooms and underground buildings, he just _knew_ it) but still, it was something.

And then the weathered and belligerent colonel who'd been lecturing him for the past half hour, who went by the name of Phillips, delivered the last straw.

The offer extended only to Hogan, not to his men.

Aside from rendering the moniker the media had given to his outfit pointless ('Hogan's Heroes' didn't really have the same ring without the 'Heroes' part of it) this cut straight to Hogan's problem with this whole organization. Damn the SSR and fuck the bureaucrats. There was a reason he'd accepted the Stalag 13 assignment. "I'm nothing without my men." He was something, sure, but that 'something' was pretty damn useless without talented field operatives. "At least make the offer."

"Hogan, you know as well as I do that the SSR is damn well not going to offer immortality to two corporals and a couple of sergeants." Phillips stared him down. "I don't care _how_ damn good they were at blowing up bridges and pillaging ammo dumps. We want you, and _only_ you."

"Then I reject your offer, _sir._" Hogan was unflinching. He stood and leaned forward slightly over the desk, matching Phillips' stare. Phillips had seniority over him, and he loathed it. "The only way I want to be part of your outfit is if my men are with me. Even if they don't choose to accept, give them the chance. There's no way I'd have been as successful without them." A one-man sabotage operation would have been pointless, and most prisoners would've had neither the initiative nor the inclination to take part in Hogan's wild schemes. He owed this much to them.

More words and harsh glares were exchanged. Finally Phillips relented, under great protest. He'd agreed to offer the option of joining the SSR's program to the others, but only if Hogan accepted.

So, he did.

When negotiations were over and papers had been signed, Phillips was more than glad to see him go, and showed this by slamming the door behind him. Hogan winced slightly as the acrid cleaning-solvent stench hit him in the nostrils on the way out. Accepting the SSR's offer was a devil's bargain, but it was what he had to do. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his leather jacket and headed towards the exit doors.

Might as well make the most of his opportunities.


End file.
